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Friday, 10 February 2017

I STARTED A JOKE

Last week, planning my article about a possible “bias
against understanding” in 1970s TV journalism – still much more engaging than
it sounds – I did what I usually do, talking about what I had in mind with a
couple of people at work. Going through the bits of information I had, I was
surprised when one section, later deemed superfluous to the rest of the
article, got a laugh at the end. Thinking about it afterwards, I had introduced
an idea of something, presented it in the right order, and added a punchline to
it.

I am not someone who thinks of themselves as someone who can
tell a joke, and have never gone out of my way to write one. However, recognising
a skill to be developed, here is that excised section from last week, plus two
other observations from the last week.

1) When the BBC merged its News and Current Affairs
departments together, Current Affairs moved out of its centre, based in another
part of London. Formerly the Gaumont-British Studios, where Alfred Hitchcock
made “The 39 Steps” (1935) and “The Lady Vanishes” (1938), Lime Grove was
bought by the BBC in 1949. However, Lime Grove is also the name of the
residential street in which the studios were based - when the BBC ran out of
office space, they started buying up the terraced houses next door, meaning
episodes of “Panorama” were being planned in someone’s old front room. The
studios were demolished when the BBC moved out, with the rubble being used as
hardcore for widening the M25 motorway – you can no longer visit it, but you
may have driven over it.

2) On Monday 6th February, Bauer Media relaunched
their local radio network, which includes Key 103 in Manchester and Radio City
in Liverpool, with a refined station sound and playlist. However, others
focussed on the style guide given to presenters, tightly restricting the
subjects and time they could speak, some links needing to be signed off by their
“content controller.” Bauer later issued a statement that described parts of
the radio industry as having “indulged itself in hyperbole,” [http://radiotoday.co.uk/2017/02/bauer-hits-back-at-style-guide-reactions/]
but it didn’t stop me from thinking they could do with hiring Siri, Cortana,
Alexa or Google Assistant for their mid-morning shows. So, I wrote on Twitter: “@bauerradio
How come @wave105radio, one of your stations, can do perfectly well without all
these rules?” Wave 105, “The South’s Best Variety of Hits,” liked the Tweet in
return – I should have asked why, but if they answered, they could become Magic
105 by the next time I tuned in.

3) So, that Donald Trump, eh? That President of the United
States that needs members of his staff to clarify what he says on Twitter? When
Steven Poole decodified “Trumpspeak” – all the “dishonest,” “failing,” and “bad”
stuff - for the “Guardian” newspaper, [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/07/bad-dudes-dumb-deals-trumpspeak-decoded-donald-trump-language]
I realised how darkly funny this could be. George Orwell’s “Nineteen
Eighty-Four” gave us the idea of “Newspeak” as a way of restricting the population’s
ability to articulate itself, allowing the rulers to control them more easily –
but what if the head of state does it to themselves first?